


Cas? You Won’t Forget Me Will You?

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, M/M, Reapers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-15
Updated: 2013-11-15
Packaged: 2018-01-01 16:43:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1046161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reapers. They do exist, trust me. They live in the very same world as you and I. They live the very same lives as you and I. Often, they don’t even know that they are reapers, but they carry on through their lives, facilitating the passing of souls from this life to the next.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cas? You Won’t Forget Me Will You?

**Author's Note:**

> Okay basically the idea is that some humans are actually reapers but don't realise it. They often feel a strong urge to visit someone they know who is sick/dying and then that person passes on soon after the visit. I know someone who this actually happens to so that's where the idea came from. The start was really hard to write so I'm sorry if it's disjointed and awkward etc.
> 
> As always, this is un-beta'd so please ignore any mistakes that I haven't picked up on yet. And if anyone is interested in beta-ing, you know where to find me.

Reapers. They do exist, trust me. They live in the very same world as you and I. They live the very same lives as you and I. Often, they don’t even know that they are reapers, but they carry on through their lives, facilitating the passing of souls from this life to the next.

Castiel knew nothing of, nor cared any bit for reapers and death for over twenty years. He thought nothing of grief until the day his best friend confessed there was an expiration date on his life. The day Castiel found Dean outside his apartment, silently sobbing with red rimmed and blank eyes, was the day that Castiel truly understood the fear of loss. It was the first day Castiel could honestly say, he hated God. It was the day Dean Winchester learned that he was going to die.

Dean hadn’t been feeling himself for months but because of stupid, testosterone fuelled machismo, and his “everything’s gonna be fine” attitude, he had refused to see a doctor. It wasn’t until he collapsed in the garage one day while at work that he considered the idea that something might be wrong. Doctors, and nurses, and what seemed like the families of every medical practitioner in the state, poked and prodded at him for almost two days. When they found nothing of immediate concern, they sent him home with a clean bill of health, sans his blood tests, but really they “probably wouldn’t find anything out of the ordinary” in those. Dean thought no more of it and Cas’ worries seemed to subside a little after that.

It was about six weeks later when Dean received a call from one of his ER doctors asking him to come see her in the hospital to collect his blood results. He may have failed to mention the visit to Cas (he knew the guy would just flip out and worry excessively, he was doing his friend a favour). With his positive mind frame firmly set in place he didn’t worry at all about why he had to physically speak to his doctor about a set of blood tests. He didn’t think to worry that they might not be clear. Without too much fuss, the doctor sat him down and explained the results. She informed him of the treatment options for whatever type of untreatable cancer he had (he couldn’t even remember the name of it by the time he reached Cas’ place later that day). She told him that all they could do was ease his suffering and gave him a realistic prediction of six months, two of which would probably be spent in a hospital bed. He crumpled in his seat, and honestly, he cried for over an hour, macho man or no. When the tears finally ceased, and the chest heaving sobs became bearable, he stumbled back to his car, with a folder tucked under his arm and filled with papers and information booklets overflowing with words such as: _hospice care, palliative treatment, grief, terminal._ There was only one place he wanted to go, only one person he wanted to see; home and family would have to wait, just a little bit.

He sat outside Cas’ building waiting for the other man to come home from school (Dean’s sobbing grew violent once more when he realised that he’d never see Cas graduate from college, and he’d never get the chance to tease him about finally being the “holy tax accountant” he had always appeared to be). The time passed by as day bled into night and Dean grew increasingly numb. Who knows how long he had been sitting there by the time Cas arrived home? Cas coaxed Dean inside and after a little while he managed to extract the story out of him. They sat on Cas’ beaten, worn out sofa, Dean continued to sob into Cas’ shoulder, soaking the pale blue shirt he was wearing, and tears streamed steadily down Cas’ anguished face into Dean’s hair. The night passed and neither man moved as they grappled with life’s unanswerable questions. Eventually they drifted off into a pained sleep.

The following week brought a catastrophic shitstorm as one by one the people in Dean’s life came to grips with just how frail and vulnerable human mortality truly was, but Cas was there for every step along the way. He was there when Dean had to tell his mother that she would have to bury her son, he was there when Dean went to see a lawyer and put his “affairs” in order, he was even there when Dean went shopping for his own coffin and gravestone. That being said, not everything was permanently morbid. Dean finally went on that road trip he had always wanted to with Sam and Cas sitting right there with him. He created and completed a bucket list, no matter how clichéd that may be. Not a single person could say that Dean Winchester didn’t use his time well. But when the day came that he just couldn’t get out of bed and his body threatened to give out right then and there, he would have given up all the joy he felt in those months just to live a little longer.

True to the doctor’s predictions, Dean finally entered hospice care a little over four months after his diagnosis. The first day was terrifying but the near constant presence of everyone he loved eased the crippling fear that he felt. When visiting hours drew to a close and the nurse asked his friends and family to leave so that Dean could rest, he let out a noise that was truly the mark of a broken man, afraid to be alone, afraid of what was to come, afraid of dying. He begged the nurse to let just one person stay with him, just for that night, and Cas settled into the arm chair beside the bed before she could even respond. She took one look at the _I will kill you myself if you so much as try to make me leave_ expression on his face and nodded solemnly before ushering the others out of the room and closing the door quietly.

“Sorry, you probably wanted one of your parents here tonight. I just...” Cas began, “I can’t leave you alone in here when there isn’t even any hot nurses.”

“Says the gay guy,” Dean responded with a half hearted chuckle, but Cas could see that he appreciated the attempt at levity.

“Well yeah, have you seen any male nurses around? ‘Cause I most certainly haven’t. And last time I checked, no male nurses, equals no hot nurses,” Cas fired back with exaggerated gayness and even a sassy wrist flick for good measure. Dean laughed genuinely that time and something inside Cas gave a bitterly nostalgic twinge seeing Dean actually happy and not just putting on a show for the people around him. Cas never called him on it but he had noticed Dean growing emptier since his diagnosis. Cas thought staying with Dean that night was the hardest thing he had ever done but he refused to sacrifice any more time. Dean drifted off into a restless but thankfully painless sleep and Cas catalogued every detail about Dean, who knew how long he would have?

They settled into a routine whereby Cas would visit every day except Thursday when he had work and didn’t finish until after the end of visiting hours. On Thursdays, Cas would just call Dean when he returned from work, and they would talk about nonsense that best friends always talked about until one of them finally fell asleep. This routine continued like clockwork for almost two whole months, Dean’s condition slowly deteriorating, until one Thursday afternoon, Cas left his last class of the day with an extremely unsettling feeling. Instead of heading to his part time job at the bookstore he drove straight to the hospital, something wasn’t right. He couldn’t explain why but he knew that he needed to see Dean that day.

He flew into Dean’s room to find him napping, the way he was most of the time towards the end. He sat down in the same arm chair as that first night and took Dean’s sleeping hand. He whispered soothing sentiments and declarations of love into the paled skin of Dean’s hand as he traced shapes up and down his weakened arm. He sat in that trance for what could have been hours before Dean finally cracked open an eye and let out a contented sigh.

“Did I finally manage to sleep through Thursday?” he asked gently “I hate Thursdays in this place, you’re never here on Thursdays,” Dean had begun to quietly ramble, his breathing weak.

“No, ‘fraid not, it’s still Thursday, I just wanted to come see you today,” Cas mumbled, hoping Dean wouldn’t seek an explanation he couldn’t provide. There was a calm silence for a few minutes, Cas still playing with Dean’s hand, before Dean broke it.

“I think it’s going to happen soon,” he breathed, exerting himself to turn his head toward Cas, “any day now I’ll be dead. It’s so surreal, to think that I’m here today but in a few days, or maybe even a few hours, I’ll be nothing but energy and atoms re-dispersed across the universe.”

“Don’t say shit like that, man. Yeah, it’s pretty fucking bleak but can we just not talk about it? Can we just bury our heads in the sand for just a little while longer? It’ll happen when it happens we don’t need to talk about it. Please... Please, Dean... I can’t... I just...” Cas slowly trailed off from his manic outburst as the tears began to roll down his face. He rested his forehead on the hand he held between his own. Dean was still a little shocked by Cas’ use of expletives but they had become more common in his vernacular since Dean had gotten sick. He moved his hand slightly to wipe some of the tears from Cas’ face.

“Hey, c’mon Cas, look at me. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I have it easy, I guess. I don’t have to hang around for the aftermath. If it was you in this bed... Hell I don’t know what I’d do,” Dean took a deep breath before continuing, “If it was you, I hope I would have the balls to tell you how I’ve felt about you for years,” he muttered almost too quietly. Cas’ head shot up and tilted to the side into that classic confused gaze that he wore for at least the first seven years of their friendship, but before he could say anything, Dean continued, seemingly unaware of what he was saying, “Cas? You won’t forget me will you? ‘Cause like you believe in all that Jesus stuff right? You think there’s somewhere to go after this? You think I’ll ever see you again?” his voice started to break and his eyes started to glisten so Cas put his befuddlement aside to comfort his dying friend.

“Of course I’ll remember you Dean, I’ll always remember you, how could I possibly forget you?” he resisted the urge to make a joke about Dean being a pain in the ass, and carried on, “I know there’s something out there after this, I may not know what, but I know that it is infinitely better than here. It’s a place filled with peace, happiness and contentment. A place void of misery, destruction and pain. And I know that I’ll see you again, because I did not go to church for twenty years to be cheated out of my own personal heaven, I will personally kick St Peter’s feathery ass if he so much as tries to keep you from me,” Cas didn’t know where all of that came from, he had never really considered the afterlife, never mind form a solid opinion about it. He just knew what Dean needed to hear, and that became his belief. Dean chuckled at Cas blaspheming (another recent character trait) and as his laughter died off he regarded Cas’ face with wonder,

“That’s why I love you Cas, you always know how to make things better.”

Cas was shocked but decided that it may be now or never so he pushed himself out of the chair, dropped Dean’s hand and cradled his face between his own hands before pressing the softest of kisses on Dean’s still parted lips. He closed his eyes and sighed in contented relief and whispered the words “I love you too” into Dean’s skin. Castiel pulled back to see Dean give him a gentle smile of pure bliss before he closed his eyes for the last time.

It was 5.27 pm when Dean Winchester slipped into unconsciousness. Cas sat on the edge of the bed and recorded every detail of Dean’s finally peaceful face through glistening eyes. He didn’t move when Dean’s family arrived or when the nurses came in to check on them. It was 9.27pm when Dean Winchester died. Castiel crumbled and sobbed onto the now still chest of his oldest friend. He stumbled through the post mortem procedures and wrapped his arms around Dean’s family while they cried. He shouldered Dean’s coffin and helped to lower it into the ground. He gave a eulogy by the grave to ensure that no one ever forgot the great man that Dean Winchester was. He stayed by the grave long after everyone had left and stared blankly at the freshly replaced soil. He talked to Dean about nothing and everything, the way they always had. When, at last he returned home, he finally opened the old, expensive bottle of whiskey Dean had given him for his birthday last year, made a toast to his best friend and tried to forget about the crippling ache festering in his chest.

**Author's Note:**

> As usual, please leave comments etc below. Or else come say hi on tumblr: aplagueuponyourhouse.tumblr.com


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